Hope The Wheels on The Phaeton Are Still Round - It's Time To Go

Well, that was a quick six months!  It seems like we just got settled in and started having fun, and already it's time to get going.  We'll be pulling up the jacks tomorrow morning and heading towards New Orleans for a few days of visiting with our good friend, Rosalie.  Then it will be on to more adventures down the road.

We've had some fun times here at the Rainbow Plantation!  Way too many to go into detail, but here are some of the highlights:

A Christmas Parade with "Santa"

A lunch on the beach with a group of friends, with some lounging around afterward in the restaurant's great beach seating:

The Big Event - Mardi Gras! Peggy and Mike Everingham were here to enjoy the festivities, and there's Jim standing behind Darrell and Judy Patterson:

Darrell was crowned King of Rainbow Plantation's Mardi Gras:

We got to do a tiny bit of line dancing at one of the Mardi Gras parties, here are Barb, me, Ann and Joan doing the Cowboy Charleston around the room.

The theme this year was the Roaring Twenties, and here are Janet and Al Whitney portraying a gangster and his gal:

 I'm not sure anyone ever found out who was hiding in this scarecrow costume!

Line dancing has been an important part of my time here.  I facilitated the Tuesday/Thursday classes which have been designed for people who've had a little more experience with line dance to continue improving their skills by learning new dances.  We have had a great time, and the class showed their appreciation with a little going away party after our last class this past Thursday.

 Starting In the lower center and moving clockwise,  is Joan, Ann, Renee, Madonna, Me, Muffy, and Donna.  The class presented me with a very generous gift card to a local favorite grill - Big Daddy's, where I had my birthday party.  I'll miss this group!

 In addition to these classes, I talked a few of the ladies into joining me at the Foley Senior Center on Wednesday afternoons for another line dance class, and I attended a Monday evening class in Fairhope several times.  I'm looking forward to picking all these classes back up when we come back later next fall.

We had a few days where our RV site became "lakefront" property and we had the opportunity to catch up on reading, napping and a few inside projects.

But in spite of some cooler, wetter weather then we might have wished for, it's been a beautiful time here in Lower Alabama.  Of course, we didn't do everything we thought we might, maybe next time!

We're looking forward to our return to the Plantation, but we're also excited about new adventures coming up.

A Birthday, Mardi Gras, and Party, Party, Party!

Well, someone's got to do this!  You know, someone has to stay up North in the cold and snow, and someone has to be here in the South, enjoying the sun and warm weather.  Well, O.K., so we've had a few days with rain and wind and cooler temps.  But not one snowflake!  (When we sold our house way back in '07, the "his 'n her" snow shovels remained in their assigned slots in the garage tool rack so the new homeowner could enjoy them.)

Since my last entry, we've been living our standard routine here at Rainbow Plantation in beautiful LA (that's Lower Alabama).  I'm up early most days for line dancing.  I'm leading the Tuesday/Thursday class, so I need to stay on my toes (literally) to keep up with the class.  On Wednesdays, I try to make it down to the Foley Senior Center for the class there each week.   Jim fits in a laundry day every week, and I still use that time to do some cleaning.  We had to do a little yard work here, borrowed the weed trimmer and trimmed things up a bit around our site.  The maintenance guys won't trim right up to the rigs, too much chance of some kind of trouble if they do.  That's OK with us, we'd rather do any close trimming ourselves.

On one of our outings to the water, we came across this fellow:

This picture was taken at one of our favorite spots along Mobile Bay - Mullet Point Park:

Oh, yes, I did celebrate a recent birthday.  Last Tuesday, about 14 of us gathered at our nearby favorite grill, Big Daddy's where we enjoyed a variety of shrimp, fish, hamburgers, and Philly style cheese steak sandwiches.  Our friend, Joann Forsythe managed to sneak a chocolate cake in to the restaurant's kitchen!  Not only was it my birthday, but it was also Ginny's birthday, the day before Roberta's birthday, and Al and Janet's anniversary.  All in all, a great day for a celebration.  Which birthday?  Well, there's a Beatles song that commemorates my age...  one line in the song starts off something like this..."will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm blank-blank-4?

Here's the group at Big Daddy's.  It's hard to see everyone, but starting at the right front, there's Ginny, Danielle, Darrell, me, Joann, George and Gregg.  On the left front is Jack, Judy and Keith.

Another view, in the lower left is Ginny, moving left is Jack, Judy Keith Roberta, Janet and Al.  On the right front is Danielle.

In this area of the country, at this time of year, we're all gearing up for the Mardi Gras celebration as well.  Saturday evening we attended our first-ever Mardi Gras parade over in Fairhope, Alabama.  This was a family-friendly parade with bands, floats and lots of beads, toys and Moon Pies getting tossed our way.  We had a great time and came home with a big bag full of goodies.

This was one of many very highly decorated floats.  We had to pay more attention to what was being tossed to us than how beautiful the floats were!

The rest of our celebrations will likely take place here at the Plantation, as there are dinners, lunches, skits and parades here.  Yes, I'm signed up to take a part in one of the many comedy skits that will be performed.  Maybe I'll be a famous You-tube sensation (gee, I hope not!).

Our friends, Judy and Darrell Patterson, have recently given up their ERPU lot here to take possession of their very own 1/2 acre lot.  With that and one other lot recently given up, we've moved up a whole 2 places on the waiting list - at last check, we're now #14 on the list.  We talked to one of the couples very close to the top of the list, they've been waiting 5 years so far.  Since we've just started our 3rd year on the list, it could be awhile before we make that #1 spot on the list.  That's OK, we'll just keep the wheels rolling for now.

Speaking of rolling the wheels, we're beginning to take a look at our spring and summer plans.  So far, it looks like we'll crank up the Cummins and head towards New Orleans and points beyond around mid-March.  Stay tuned for more details as we figure them out.  I think we've got some fun events coming up!

On the way home from the Foley Senior Center Line Dance Class today, I got a call from Mike over at the Patterson's.  Seems they were whipping up some frozen Margaritas and needed a little assistance consuming them.  Sign us up!  We made it before they melted away to nothing (the Margarita's, not the Pattersons or Everinghams), so we got to enjoy a chilled drink and some really entertaining company this afternoon.

Jim grilled salmon fillets on cedar planks for dinner this evening, just another great time in Alabama!

Starting a New Year and Very Sad News

We celebrated Christmas quietly at home, although we did enjoy a fun evening at the clubhouse on Christmas Eve.  They have a fun gift exchange for those who want to participate.  Everyone who brings a gift to exchange sits in a circle while a story is read.  Each time the words "right" or "left" are spoken in the story, the gifts are passed in the appropriate direction  The story goes quickly, and with 75 people or more sitting in a circle passing gifts of varying sizes and wrappings, things get interesting quickly!  But it all worked out just right, Jim ended up with a very nice LED flashlight, and I came home with a cozy lap blanket, which one of the dogs promptly claimed as their own!

I took a break from line dancing on Christmas Day, but otherwise continued with the routine of learning new dances and teaching them to our group about as fast as I could learn them.  I've been blessed to have both Danielle Mayer and Roberta Bisel here to help me learn some new dances.  Both of these wonderful women have danced and taught for many years and have a great store of dance knowledge to share.  They both know our good friend, Pat McFall, and Danielle knows good friend Dortha Hall as well.  I just love how so many of our friendships are enter-twined with each other!

New Year's Eve found us at the clubhouse early for a gathering, but we were home long before the start of 2013.  Line dancing class occurred as usual on Tuesday morning, no matter that it was New Year's Day!  After class, I came home and we prepared the traditional Southern meal to start the New Year with good luck and prosperity.

A very tragic and sad event occurred on Sunday, January 6.  Our very close friend in Amarillo, Vickie, called last Sunday to let us know she and her husband, Don, found her son, Duston, deceased in his home.  These are the friends who have the full RV Hook-up at their house in Amarillo where we stay in the spring.  Jim went to high school with Vickie and reconnected with her a few years ago at their high school reunion.  Duston was only 36 at the time of his passing.  We packed up a few things, arranged to have our neighbor watch the rig, loaded up the car and left very early last Monday morning to drive to Amarillo to be with the family and help with cooking, cleaning, organizing and all the little things that needed doing with a house full of family at such a hard time.

I used my iPad to snap this picture of the sunset as we approached Amarillo around 8:30 Monday evening:

We stayed with Jim's cousins Shirley and Mike while we were there through the week.  The Celebration of Life service was held on Saturday afternoon, and there was a luncheon before the service which we helped prepare and serve at the church.  It was a very moving and beautiful service, but a hard day to get through.

During the week, there were warm days early on, but by Saturday the temperature in Amarillo had dropped dramatically and we even got some snow.  We left Amarillo to begin the return trip on Sunday morning when it was 10* with snow on the ground.  We spent the night in Shreveport and finished the trip today.  When we got back to the Plantation this afternoon, the temperature was 76*.  It feels great to be home, but we still send our thoughts and prayers to Vickie and Don, they have some very hard times ahead.

Now it's time to look forward to our very first-ever participation in Mardi Gras.  We've always left this area before the festivities, so this will be a new experience for us.  Rainbow Plantation goes all-out for Mardi Gras, plus there are numerous local parades and parties to consider.

It will take us a few days to get settled back into our routines and get the place cleaned.  We may have to borrow the mower and trimmer again, too, seems the grass has grown a bit....

Stayin' Busy

Our RV lifestyle involves a lot of socializing, which almost always means getting together for meals or happy hours.  We recently got together for lunch with neighbors Paul & Margery and Darrell & Judy at our nearby favorite, Big Daddy's.  Paul & Margery were getting ready to move on to Florida where it's warmer!  We enjoyed spending time with them and hope to see them the next time they're visiting this area.

Last Monday I joined about 45 other women from the Plantation for the annual Christmas lunch.  We went to a very nice restaurant in Robertsdale, Iveys, and had a wonderful time.

This past Thursday we joined 3 other couples to try out a new restaurant that recently opened on the beach, appropriately named The Gulf.  The menu is fairly limited, but the setting is wonderful!  Below is our group seated on the "lawn" (a patch of turf placed on top of the beach sand).  On the left are Judy, Darrell, and Jim.  On the right are Roberta, Joann, George and Keith.

Roberta and Keith are current property owners here at the plantation, but they are in the process of selling that property to our friends Judy and Darrell.  In keeping with the "small world" concept of our RV'ing community, I'll try to explain some of the connections!  George and Joann are new friends of ours (George was Jim's sponsor in joining the Elks Lodge).  They are long-time friends with Keith and Roberta, who also have property at North Ranch in Congress, Arizona, another Escapees Park.  Roberta knows our friend Pat McFall as they have line danced together at North Ranch.

Here are George and Joann standing in front of one of The Gulf's beach lounge chairs.

We had a fun time visiting and enjoying the beautiful beach setting of this unique restaurant.  We all decided the ambiance is fun, the food is nothing that special.  After lunch, George wanted to show us a local "institution" - a restaurant and bar located right on the Alabama/Florida state line - "Floribama".  So we carpooled over there and took a look around.  Everyone agreed to pose in this "beach" setting if I'd post a blog!  So here we all are:  George, Joann, Keith, Roberta, Judy, Darrell, Jim and me!

There's a new neighbor at the Plantation - Gregg arrived about a week ago in his beautiful 5th wheel pulled by a matching Volvo  - big truck!  Gregg is a friend of Pat and Mike McFall and also owns a lot across from friends Dortha and Mark at Retama Village in the Rio Grande Valley - see how the small world connections just keep happening!  Gregg is attending line dancing, as well as many of the other activities at the Plantation, and we're enjoying getting to know him.

Speaking of line dancing, I'm still going to class just about every day.  The M-W-F class is a beginner class, and the Tue. -Thur class is a little bit more geared towards intermediate.  We don't have a designated teacher for that class, right now I usually lead most of the dances unless someone else has a dance they want to teach.  I also found a local class at the Foley Senior Center that meets once a week.  I attended that class last Wednesday and found it just challenging enough!  That gives me plenty of opportunity to improve my dancing skills.

Jim has started a new project too; he's learning how to cane chairs.  There is a group of folks here at the Plantation that refurbishes chair seats and backs using cane.  It's quite an involved art that has been passed down through several generations and is being shared with people here.  Many of the chairs will be auctioned during Mardi Gras here, with the benefits going to the Escapees CARE organization.  We've heard that last year the proceeds of this auction were around $4,000!

We are blessed to be able to enjoy this lifestyle!  More adventures to come....